


Precipice

by Quiet_reader



Category: Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Depression, Drabble, Poor Tony, Potentially triggering, Starting to think this author can't write a happy fic, Suicidal Thoughts, Tony Angst, Tony Feels, Tony-centric, What the hell is this author writing about?, potential Character Death, suicidal idealation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:53:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3884872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quiet_reader/pseuds/Quiet_reader
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To stay? To go? <br/>When you're standing on a precipice, what would you do?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Precipice

**Author's Note:**

> I... I have no clue?

Precipice 

Cold.

Toes dangling languidly over an edge with nothing but space and time to slow their owners potential descent.

To stay? To go? 

Two deceptively simple questions.

Six letters. Four letters. Short and sweet.

‘To stay’

Derived from the Latin ‘sto, stare, steti, status’ – to stand. Somewhat ironic, no? “Stand up, boy! Stand tall! You represent the Stark name. Be proud!” 

Being a Stark was all about standing. Was that a suggestion about staying, too? 

‘To go’

A verb that was irregular in so many languages. Why though? Why couldn’t it just follow a pattern. 

To stay? To go?

Is that what people would say about his life? That he ‘went’ too early? Was ‘taken’ too young? 

What other such useless platitudes would they utter to avoid those harsh words.

‘He’s dead’

‘He died’

‘He committed suicide’

‘He killed himself’

‘He took his own life’

So much harsher than terms like he ‘went’ to early (damn, that irregular verb). Harsher, but more accurate. No dancing around the fact.

Better.

Would thousands of people crawl from the wood-work to discuss his ‘sweet’ side, manfully hidden by the abrasive personality he had to display to the public eye.

Poor little Tony Stark.

Look how fragile he was, really. He was misunderstood. Emotionally abused. He just needed someone to _love_ him. 

Would the news stations discuss his death in a friendly fashion? Would they pity him? Or would they go down the line of how he clearly couldn’t cope with the all the guilt on his conscience from his ‘Merchant of Death’ days. 

What did it matter, anyway?

He’d be dead. Thrown into some icy waters where no one would have to find his body.

It was a pleasing symmetry.

Water.

He was born into water – being born into a bath-tub was a fad that his mother adhered too. 

He was named by water, Anthony Edward Stark. Baptised as such as water dripped over his forehead. ‘Tony Stark’ was both killed and reborn through water; less dripping over his forehead and more clawing its way down his throat in some freezing cave in distant lands, but you could appreciate a sort of symmetry there. 

Different religions, anyway. 

Baptised by Catholics.

Baptised by fire and Muslims.

Was it racist to assume all the terrorists in the Ten Rings were Muslims just because they lived in Afghanistan?

Probably.

Who cares?

Not him at this moment in time.

He was allowed to be dramatic, alright?

He was standing on the precipice of a cliff with waves crashing below him as he contemplated whether he wished to jump or not.

A certain amount of melodrama was allowed. To be expected, even! 

What would kill him, anyway? Would he be lucky and hit some rocks on the way down? Or would he just drown in the water.

Maybe a combination of the two? Smashed onto some rocks by the powerful waves.

A shudder warped its way through the curled-up frame seated on the ground with just its feet dangling over the edge of a cliff.

That probably wouldn’t be very pleasant. 

Quick though, hopefully.

Unless he hit the rocks feet first, then maybe there’d be some shattering of bones before he died. 

Then it’d be torturously painful as well. 

Maybe that’d be better. Did he really deserve the mercy of a quick death? 

What was the mathematics of his life? He was meant to be a genius, right? Surely he could work out what kind of death he deserved by assigning numbers to his good and bad actions.

Numbers were good. Numbers didn’t lie.

Though who was he to assign points to the good and bad things he had done?

How could he ascertain what the correct values were?

Surely becoming Iron Man counted as at least positive ten? Unless that was counteracted by allowing terrorists access to his weapons. Maybe he should count each American soldier killed as a negative five? Then each civilian he saved as a positive five. 

But… then the whole New York debacle happened. Technically he saved the whole of New York…

But that wasn’t him alone. That was the Avengers as a whole, right? So how many points could he get for that? 

He also wiped out an alien race.

Or some of them at least.

Would the Butterfly Effect come into play there? What if those aliens were like bees? They were required to ensure pollination or something happened across space? Would the whole eco-system be put out of whack because he killed a large chunk of aliens? 

What if they hadn’t really wanted to attack Earth after all, but were compelled to by Loki? Or something else? 

There were far too many unquantifiable things to measure out his life on a balancing scale.

How was he to make this decision?

To stay? To go?

Would people miss him? Yes. They’d miss Iron Man, but Rhodey could cover him. He was bright enough to work out ways to keep War Machine functioning.

Rhodey would miss him for sure. But he’d get over it; he’d have to bury himself in his work for a while maybe. Pepper too. She’d struggle. They were all each other had, after all.

But was he doing her more bad than good by staying? He did cause her plenty of undue stress, after all. That was getting back to assigning value to his actions again.

Didn’t work.

How could he make this decision?

When you’re standing on the edge of a precipice, what should you do?

To stay? To go?

Do some heroes deserve to fall?

“…Sir?”

To stay.

To go.

Huh.


End file.
